and outworn creeds. Religion seemed to him hopelessly damaged, and
he asked himself whether morality would not follow religion. If the
Christian sanction were lost, would the difference between right and
wrong survive? His own state of mind was thoroughly wretched. The
creed in which he had been brought up was giving way under him, and
he could find no principle of action at all. Brooding ceaselessly
over these problems, he at the same time lowered his physical
strength by abstinence, living upon bread, milk, and vegetables,
giving up meat and wine. In this unpromising frame of mind, and in
the course of solitary rambles, he composed The Nemesis of Faith.*
The book is, both in substance and in style, quite unworthy of
Froude. But in the life of a man who afterwards wrote what the world
would not willingly let die it is an epoch of critical importance.
To describe it in a word is impossible. To describe it in a few
words is not easy. Froude himself called it in after life a "cry of
pain," meaning that it was intended to relieve the intolerable
pressure of his thoughts. It is not a novel, it is not a treatise,
it is not poetry, it is not romance. It is the delineation of a
mood; and though it was called, with some reason, sceptical, its
moral, if it has a moral, is that scepticism leads to misconduct.
That unpleasant and unverified hypothesis, soon rejected by Froude
himself, has been revived by M. Bourget in Le Disciple, and L'Etape.
The Nemesis of Faith is as unwholesome as either of these books, and
has not their literary charm. It had few friends, because it
disgusted free-thinking Liberals as much as it scandalised orthodox
Conservatives. If it were read at all nowadays, as it is not, it
would be read for the early sketches of Newman and Carlyle,
afterwards amplified in memorable pages which are not likely to
perish.